Subject: Re: Operation of "shift" key according to ISO/IEC 9995 International Keyboard Standard

From: "Alain LaBont/e'/" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 15:54:46 -0400

At 14:07 15/07/1996 EDT, [email-masked] wrote:
>From: Rick Pond
>Subject: Operation of "shift" key
>
>Hello Alain,
>
>I have a question for you about ISO 9995.  The keys at either end of row
>B are called "level 2 select" whereas most people think of them (and
>they are labelled on my keyboards) as "shift".  If they perform a level
>two select, then when "caps lock" is on they should have no effect on the
>normal English (non accented) alphabetic keys.  However, in many cases
>(including both OS/2 and Win 95 -- I haven't tried others) when caps
>lock is on, pressing one of these keys will cause a LOWER case alphabetic
>to be displayed.  In other words, the key operates like a "shift" key
>which shifts into the "other" level -- either level 2 (if caps lock is
>off) or level 1 (if caps lock is on.)
>
>Is my interpretation of 9995 correct?  If so, are many keyboard drivers
>actually contravening the requirements of 9995?

ISO/IEC 9995 is mute on this so this is not a requirement and is left to the
application. 

ISO/IEC 9995-7 *describes* "level 2 select" (the up-to-date-name for
traditional "shift", a term deprecated [in French "Sélection du niveau 2",
as per the same standard], as there are now 3 levels on keyboards, except on
American ones) as: "to select the set of characters *or functions* allocated
to the level 2 of the keyboard in the currently active group" and describes
Caps Lock as: " to select the state in which only capital forms of the
letters are entered. Note: On certain national keyboards, for certain keys,
this function is equivalent to level 2 lock". 

With this data, my interpretation as editor (of course there might be other
opinions, I am not alone in this committee) is that a lot of things are
allowed with much flexibility, allowing the market-bettering of user system
interfaces:

-it can be considered a feature function of "level 2 select" to change the
state 
 of the keyboard temporarily when you are in CapsLock to cancel its effect for
 letters only, although I have seen some drivers which behave more 
 intelligently, having options to turn CapsLock off whenever a letter is typed 
 when "level 2 select" is depressed and you type a letter (my DOS Canadian
 keyboard driver behaves like this while beeping when it occurs and allows 
 its tailoring to a more traditional option); if you use a keyboard intensively 
 you know what burden it is to type a line of capital letters with a lower case
 initial (in many instances in this case, most of the time it is because you 
 have forgot that your keyboard is in Caps Lock mode); on the Internet typing 
 lines of capital letters in this mode would also nowadays be perceived as very 
 "yahoo" (i.e. brutal, "redneck", if I interpret the translation of this
English 
 word in French as made by my dictionaries) manners btw (-: so it is better
 to correct this practice;

-CapsLock can also in certain countries (thanks to France's insistance) be
 equivalent to "level 2 lock" (in countries other than France and Belgium where
 the Latin script is not the primary set, it might also make sense).

>(By the way, one exception that I have found is Comm Manager/2 which does
>display upper case alphabetics with caps lock on and shift depressed.)

It imho also makes sense, it is a mechanical and less intelligent but useful
variant of what I described for my DOS keyboard driver made for real people
according to real people experience...

>
>Thanks for your help!
>
>Rick Pond          416-448-3222 (TL 778)
>3R/979/1150        fax    -4414
>National Language Technical Centre
>Toronto SWS Lab    inet: [email-masked]

You are most welcome.

Alain LaBonté
Editor, ISO/IEC 9995, and 
co-editor with Bernard Chauvois (Tours, France) and
               Fred Bealle (Toronto), of specific ISO/IEC 9995-7

bcc to many selected interested parties, including Microsoft Canada now working 
    hard on Canadian keyboard interfaces seriously so they might be interested 
    too in international user-machine interfaces' trends